Chapter 3 - The Broken Mirror
Loretta didn’t speak for a long time. She sat on our sofa with her purse clutched in both hands, her knuckles white against the faux leather. When she finally looked up, her eyes were swimming with shame.
"Elias..." she began, her voice barely a whisper. "I only... I thought I was protecting you."
"Protecting me from what, Ma?" Elias snapped, not raising his voice, which made the words hurt even more. "Protecting me from my wife? The woman who worked two jobs to put me through trade school? The woman who stayed by my side when my back gave out and we had six dollars in the checking account? You listened to a woman whose own kids don't visit her on Thanksgiving, and you used her poison to look at my daughter like she didn't belong to me."
Beckett stood up, his face mottled red. "Look, El, I didn't mean anything by it. It was just... you know how Marlo is. She makes things sound like everyone already knows."
"You laughed, Beckett," I said, stepping between him and Elias. "When she gave Elias a box with a baby pacifier and a business card for a cheap DNA lab at Christmas dinner, you laughed so hard you nearly choked on your beer. You didn't ask if it was true. You just wanted front-row seats to the circus."
Beckett couldn't look at me. He muttered a hollow, miserable apology, grabbed his jacket from the back of the chair, and walked out the front door without another word. The sound of his truck engine turning over in the driveway felt like the final chord of a long, humiliating song.
Loretta stayed behind for another ten minutes, weeping into paper napkins, apologizing over and over. But when she reached out to touch Ren’s copper curls, Elias instinctively pulled the baby back half an inch.
The message was clear. Forgiveness was not going to be a casual Sunday afternoon transaction.
After Loretta left and Mom was settled in our guest room with a mug of chamomile tea and a mild sedative her doctor had prescribed for her grief, Elias and I sat together in the nursery.
The room was quiet save for the rhythmic, white-noise hum of the humidifier shaped like a sleeping bear. Ren was down in her crib, sprawled on her stomach with her tiny hands curled into fists beside her head, her thick, radiant red hair catching the dim glow of the nightlight.
I sat on the floor, leaning my back against the wall, exhausted down to the marrow of my bones. Elias pulled the rocking chair close, sat down, and dropped his head into his hands.
"I’m sorry, Jules," he whispered. His shoulders shook once, twice, before the floodgates gave way.
I didn't move toward him immediately. I wanted to, but the wound inside my chest was still open and bleeding. "Why didn't you defend me, Elias? Why did you look at those websites on your phone?"
He wiped his face roughly, looking at me with red, tormented eyes. "Because I’m a coward," he said bluntly. "Because when a lie is repeated fifty times by someone who acts like it’s an obvious fact, a dark, disgusting corner of your brain starts whispering, *What if you're the fool?* I hated myself every second I looked at those screens. I looked at Ren every morning and saw my grandmother’s eyes, but then Beckett would text me some meme about red hair, or Mom would ask if you had any 'old college friends' visiting, and the doubt would crawl right back into my chest."
He reached into his pocket and pulled out an unopened, sealed plastic envelope. It was an official, clinical collection kit from a certified genetic testing facility in the state capital—not a cheap mail-order novelty, but a chain-of-custody legal paternity test.
My breath hitched. "When did you buy that?"
"Yesterday," Elias said, his voice cracking. "I bought it because I told myself that today, after the party, I was going to do it in secret. Not because I didn't trust you, but because I wanted an iron wall to throw in my mother's face so she would never say your name with that tone again."
He looked down at the box, then looked at me. Then, with deliberate, slow fury, he grabbed the thick cardboard package with both hands and tore it straight down the middle. He ripped it again, and again, until the sterile swabs and collection vials clattered onto the hardwood floor in useless plastic scraps.
"I don't need a lab to tell me who my daughter is," Elias said, tears streaming down his cheeks as he slid out of the rocking chair to sit on the floor beside me. "She's mine. She's ours. And I let my garbage family and your toxic sister make me forget what a real marriage looks like."
I looked at the torn pieces on the floor, then at the man I had loved for six years. The relief didn't feel like fireworks; it felt like a heavy, suffocating wool blanket being lifted off my lungs.
"We’re still doing it," I said quietly.
Elias froze, staring at me. "What? No. Jules, I just tore it up. I don't want it."
"No, Elias," I said, reaching out to grip his forearms with steel in my grip. "We are going to a certified legal lab on Monday morning. We are going to have a third-party technician swab Ren's cheek, your cheek, and mine. We are going to get an official, notarized, state-certified document with nine nines behind the ninety-nine percent. And we are going to frame a copy and send it via registered certified mail to Loretta, to Beckett, and to Marlo."
"Why?" he asked, searching my face.
May you like
"Because bullies thrive in ambiguity," I told him, the resolve settling deep in my gut. "Marlo weaponized doubt because doubt doesn't leave a paper trail. From now on, everything in this family is going to be written in black and white. And tomorrow morning, Mom and I are going to an estate attorney."
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